Part 20 (1/2)

”A 'hard world for gentlemen'!” meditated Joy, and laughed as she trailed one hand in the water. ”It's a much harder one for ladies, if Allan but knew it!”

She bent over, half-absently, to watch the water in the basin. It fascinated her, the flow of it, and it helped her to reason things out. There were several things that needed reasoning.

To begin with--there was no use saying it wasn't so, for it was--she was in love with John.... Her heart beat hard as she looked down into the water and said the words in her mind. It would have been lovely to do nothing but sit there and think of him. There were so many different wonderful things he had for her to think about; his steady eyes that changed from warm-gray to steel-gray, and back, and could look as if they loved you or hated you or admired you or fathered you, while the rest of his face told nothing at all; the little gold glint in his fair hair and the way it curled when it was damp weather; his square, back-flung shoulders; the strong way he had of moving you about, as if you were a doll--the way his voice sounded when she said certain words--

Joy pulled her thoughts from all that by force.

”Clarence Rutherford calls me a sorcerette,” she thought, ”and I suppose I must be. This must be being one. But, oh, I _have_ to think how I can get John to love me back!”

It looked a little hopeless, to think of, at first. He was so old and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had said the night before came back to her--one of the girl's half-scornful, half-amused phrases.

”Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there,” she had vouchsafed, ”men _are_ such simple-minded children of nature!

All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what to do, and they'll do it.”

Joy could scarcely imagine treating John like a hound. She was too afraid of him, except once in a while when she had a burst of daring. But, at any rate, if she went on the principle that John was simple-minded and could always be depended on to think she felt the way she acted, things would be lots easier.

”If only I can keep the courage!” she prayed.

But as to details. She would have to let John see enough of her to want her about. But--not so much that he got tired of it.

”I wonder how much of me would tire him?” she said. Anyway--Joy dimpled as she thought of it--he seemed to want to be the only one.

He didn't seem to want Clarence around. They all kept telling her Clarence was a flirt--as if she wanted him to be anything else! It's a comfort sometimes to know that a man can be depended on not to have intentions.... Very well, she would try to make John jealous of Clarence. Not enough to hurt him--it would be dreadful to hurt him!--but enough to make herself valuable.

”It's going to be very hard,” she decided, ”because all I want is to do just as he says and make everything as happy for him as I can.

Oh, dear, why are men like that!”

But she was fairly certain that they were. They were like that in the books, and Gail had said so. Gail apparently knew.

”It'll be hard,” she thought sadly. Then her face brightened. ”But it'll be fun! and if it works I'll be able to be as nice to John as I want to all the rest of my life, and please him to my heart's content. Why, it'll be my duty!”

She smiled and fell into another dream about John, leaning over the fountain, with her copper braids falling across her bosom.

She had forgotten all the outside things, until presently she felt some one standing near her.

”_Lean down to the water, Melisande, Melisande!_”

the some one sang, in a soft, half-mocking voice.

She turned and looked up.

”How do you do, Mr. Rutherford?” she said sedately.

She had been addressed as ”Melisande” too many times, at home with the poets, to be particularly excited, but even a man of Clarence's well-known capabilities couldn't be expected to know this. He disposed himself gracefully along the edge of the fountain. He had a feline and leisurely grace, in spite of the fact that he wasn't specially thin, had Clarence, as he very well knew.

”I hope I won't fall into the water,” he observed disarmingly. ”I may if you speak to me too severely. See here, Melisande, why did you go and be all engaged to the worthy Dr. Hewitt? You had four or five good years of fun ahead of you if you hadn't.”

”I mustn't listen to you, if you talk that way,” Joy told him quietly.

”Oh, you'd better,” said Clarence with placidity. ”I'm very interesting.”